General information
Organisation
The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is a key player in research, development and innovation in four main areas :
• defence and security,
• nuclear energy (fission and fusion),
• technological research for industry,
• fundamental research in the physical sciences and life sciences.
Drawing on its widely acknowledged expertise, and thanks to its 16000 technicians, engineers, researchers and staff, the CEA actively participates in collaborative projects with a large number of academic and industrial partners.
The CEA is established in ten centers spread throughout France
Reference
SL-DRT-26-0047
Direction
DRT
Thesis topic details
Category
Technological challenges
Thesis topics
Hybrid Compression of Neural Networks for Embedded AI: Balancing Efficiency and Accuracy
Contract
Thèse
Job description
Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have become a cornerstone of computer vision, yet deploying them on embedded devices (robots, IoT systems, mobile hardware) remains challenging due to their large size and energy requirements. Model compression is a key solution to make these networks more efficient without severely impacting accuracy. Existing methods (such as weight quantization, low-rank factorization, and sparsity) show promising results but quickly reach their limits when used independently. This PhD will focus on designing a unified optimization framework that combines these techniques in a synergistic way. The work will involve both theoretical aspects (optimization methods, adaptive rank selection) and experimental validation (on benchmark CNNs like ResNet or MobileNet, and on embedded platforms such as Jetson, Raspberry Pi, and FPGA). An optional extension to transformer architectures will also be considered. The project benefits from complementary supervision: academic expertise in tensor decompositions and an industrial-oriented partner specialized in hardware-aware compression.
University / doctoral school
MAthématiques, Télécommunications, Informatique, Signal, Systèmes, Électronique (MATISSE)
Rennes
Thesis topic location
Site
Saclay
Requester
Position start date
01/12/2025
Person to be contacted by the applicant
OUERFELLI Mohamed-Oumar
mohamed-oumar.ouerfelli@cea.fr
CEA
DRT/DIASI//LVML
Institut CEA LIST
Communicating Systems Laboratory
CEA Saclay – Nano-INNOV
Bât 862 – PC 173 - F91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex
Tutor / Responsible thesis director
CHILLET Daniel
daniel.chillet@irisa.fr
ENSSAT _ Université de Rennes 1
6 rue de Kerampont -- BP 80518
22305 Lannion, Cedex
France
+33 2 96 46 90 69
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